The real reason Hillary Clinton keeps changing her economic message

In her desperation not to be out-demagogued on the left by the “you-didn’t-build-that-but-government-did” rants of President Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren, Mrs. Clinton recently said at a campaign rally, “Don’t let anybody—don’t let anybody—tell you that, ah, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs. You know that old theory, trickle-down economics. That has been tried; that has failed. It has failed rather spectacularly.”

Three days later, realizing that she had both jumped the shark and gone overboard, she tried for a Clintonian rhetorical “mulligan” at another campaign rally:

"Let me be absolutely clear about what I've been saying for a couple of decades: Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in an America where workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out—not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas."

It is absolutely clear why Mrs. Clinton is seesawing between condemning and giving left-handed compliments to businesses and entrepreneurs.

She wants to bash them to keep collecting campaign contributions from the left. But to have it both ways, she also wants to reassure businesses and entrepreneurs that she’s (wink, wink) only practicing temporary political pandering to appease the left until she’s elected president, so please keep the campaign contributions flowing.

But Mrs. Clinton remains wet about “trickle-down economics” and wild and wacky in her mode swings.

She claims that American businesses and entrepreneurs can easily create jobs at home if only government stops handing them tax breaks that enable them to “outsource” jobs and “stash their profits overseas.”

Let’s break down Mrs. Clinton’s breakdown in economic understanding.

In an American Thinker blog called “Hillary Clinton: Trickle-Down Ignorance,” C.M. Phillips writes that, “Of course it is businesses and corporations that create jobs. The tired old trickle-down economics meme should be relegated to the dustbin of history.” Phillips says that “trickle-down economics” is just trash talk but that the real economic concept of a “multiplier effect” clarifies how “corporations and businesses create jobs.”

Phillips explains the multiplier effect by citing a study in the book "The New Geography of Jobs" by University of California, Berkeley economics professor Enrico Moretti that shows that, “each high-tech job eventually creates five new jobs. Two of these five new jobs will be professional (e.g., doctors, accountants, lawyers) and three will be non-professional (e.g., waiters, clerks).”

Mrs. Clinton’s economic illiteracy about the jobs multiplier effect (from businesses of all kinds) is mirrored by her ideological soul mates, Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Barack Obama.

All three rant about “trickle-down economics,” “tax breaks” for businesses and “outsourcing” jobs. But what they are really creating with their policies is “hose-down economics.”

“Hose-down economics” means that Mrs. Clinton, Senator Warren and President Obama (and their political allies) hose down businesses and entrepreneurs and drown domestic job creation because they support America having the highest corporate taxes in the developed world and some of the most job-destructive, job-outsourcing regulations in developed economies.

For example, ObamaCare is a gusher when it comes to hosing down businesses and entrepreneurs with job-killing costs and regulations. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated (its estimates keep varying) that because of ObamaCare, “Virtually as many Americans will lack health coverage in 10 years as before the law was passed—but 2 million fewer will be working than if the law hadn’t passed.”

Indeed, hose-down economics via ObamaCare also affects the very middle class Americans that Mrs. Clinton, Senator Warren and President Obama claim to care so much about.

Listen to one of the legends of job creation in America, who also is renowned for providing high quality, low cost products of special appeal to middle class/working class Americans.

He is Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, also founder of Job Creators Alliance and Job Creators Network. Mr. Marcus told Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto that in 2015, after this year’s midterm elections, when certain provisions of ObamaCare kick in, up to 150 million Americans will be “very, very hurt” by ObamaCare’s cutbacks in health care coverage and will suffer from “very, very high co-pays.”

Hillary Clinton is truly on a wet, wild and wacky tear—tearing up her credibility on job creation and economic growth. Those are two of the most important areas where a would-be president of the United States cannot, in Mrs. Clinton’s words, be seen to have “failed rather spectacularly.”

Communications consultant Jon Kraushar is at www.jonkraushar.net. He is a consultant to corporate and political leaders including Steve Forbes.